Head of Intelligence unit of Dept for Homeland Security
(note: exact title uncertain as position was only confirmed 15th August 2002)

John C. Gannon is Vice-Chairman of Intellibridge Corporation, a Washington firm that provides web-based analysis to corporate and government clients. Previously he served as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (1997-2001) after serving for two years (1995-1997) as the Deputy Director for Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency. In June 1998, Mr. Gannon was also appointed the Assistant Director of Intelligence for Analysis and Production.

From 1992 until 1996, Mr. Gannon was the Director of the Office of European Analysis in the Directorate of Intelligence (DI). Before that, he held many assignments in the DI, including various management positions in the Office of European Analysis and tours on the staff of the President's Daily Brief, in the Office of Economic Research, and as a Latin America analyst.

Mr. Gannon served as a Naval Officer in Southeast Asia and later, while in the Naval Reserves, was an instructor of navigation at the Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. He has been active in civic affairs in Falls Church, Virginia, serving on the City Council and Planning Commission (as Vice Chairman and Chairman). Early in his career, Mr. Gannon taught social studies and science in a secondary school in Jamaica as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. He also taught high school in Saint Louis.

Mr. Gannon earned a Ph.D. and an M.A. in history from Washington University in Saint Louis and a B.A. in psychology from Holy Cross College in 1966. His graduate studies focused on Latin America, and his doctoral dissertation documented the evolution of political parties in Jamaica. He speaks Spanish.

John Gannon came to Mount St. James at a time when President Kennedy was issuing his call to public service. In the 36 years since his graduation from Holy Cross, John Gannon has answered that call continually and courageously, with dedication, loyalty and intellectual rigor.

A man for others from the start, he left Worcester in 1966 for Jamaica and service in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. It was there that he met his wife, Mary Ellen. The romance that blossomed in the Caribbean has sustained him for over 30 years and produced three children, Jonathan, Mark and Elizabeth.

After serving as a naval officer in Southeast Asia, John earned his Ph.D. from Washington University. He began his government career soon after, working as a political analyst specializing in Latin America. Over the course of 24 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, John served as Deputy Director for Intelligence, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production. Serving at the highest level of the nation's intelligence structure, John has become known in his field as the consummate professional. To quote CIA director, George J. Tenet, "John's record of accomplishment - in the intelligence field and in life - is truly remarkable. … All of us owe him a great debt of gratitude, and so will the generations that come after us."

Currently Vice-Chairman of the Intellibridge Corporation, John oversees all analytical and client services for the company. Active in his community, he was elected to the Falls Church City Council and was appointed Chairman of his city's planning commission. He also served on the city's Economic Development Commission. And he hasn't forgotten his Jesuit roots, serving on the board of directors at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

And yet, for all his accomplishments, John remains a man of humility, caring and humor. As one of his classmates recently wrote, "John embodies the ideals that Holy Cross seeks to inculcate?kindness, decency, respect for the dignity of all people."

For his scholarship, wisdom and guidance, and for his lifetime commitment to answering the call to duty, the College of the Holy Cross presents the Sanctae Crucis Award to John Gannon.

Vernon A. Walters (January 3, 1917 – February 10, 2002) was a United States Army officer and a diplomat. Most notably, he served from 1972 to 1976 as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and from 1985 to 1989 as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Walters rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the U.S. Army and is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

Walters was born in New York City. His father was a British immigrant and insurance salesman. From age 6, Walters lived in Britain and France with his family. At 16, he returned to the United States and worked for his father as an insurance claims adjuster and investigator.

His formal education beyond elementary school consisted entirely of boarding school instruction at Stonyhurst College, a 400-year-old Jesuit school in Lancashire, England. He did not attend a university. In later years, he seemed to enjoy reflecting on the fact that he had risen fairly high and accomplished much despite a near-total lack of formal academic training.

He spoke six Western European languages fluently, and knew the basics of several others. He was also fluent in Chinese and Russian. His simultaneous translation of a speech by United States President Richard Nixon in France prompted President Charles de Gaulle to say to the president, "You gave a magnificent speech, but your interpreter was eloquent."

Vernon Anthony Walters was born in New York City on January 3, 1917, and attended Stonyhurst College in England. He joined the United States Army in 1941, and served in North Africa and Italy during World War II, retiring in 1976 as a lieutenant general.

Prescott Sheldon Bush (May 15, 1895 – October 8, 1972) was a United States Senator from Connecticut and a Wall Street executive banker with Brown Brothers Harriman. He was the father of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush and the grandfather of current President George W. Bush.

Bush was born in Columbus, Ohio to Flora Sheldon and Samuel Prescott Bush. Samuel Bush was a railroad executive, then a steel company president, and during World War I, also a federal government official in charge of coordination and assistance to major weapons contractors.

Wikipedia does not mention that Prescott Bush attended Stonyhurst College from 1908-1913, but instead states:

Quote:

Bush attended the Douglas School in Columbus and then St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island from 1908 to 1913. In 1913, he enrolled at Yale University, officially creating a long-standing family legacy; four subsequent generations of Bushes have been Yale alumni. Prescott Bush was admitted to the ΖΨ fraternity while at Yale and Skull and Bones secret society. Prescott Bush has long been implicated in the society's alleged theft of the skull of Native American leader Geronimo, when three Bonesmen were stationed at Fort Sill.[1] Some historians, and Cecil Adams, regard this claim as false.

Prescott Bush played varsity golf, football, and baseball, and was president of the Yale Glee Club.

After attending the Douglas School in Columbus and St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island as well as the famous Stonyhurst College in England (where he designed the boys' golf course still in use today) from 1908 to 1913, Bush entered Yale University. There, he played varsity golf, football, and baseball, and was president of the Yale Glee Club. (He was the best close-harmony man in the class of 1917). His devotion to singing at Yale would remain strong his entire life, evidenced in part by his founding of the Yale Glee Club Associates, an alumni group, in 1937. On May 18, 1916 he was "tapped" to join the Skull and Bones society at Yale. Other new "Bonesmen" that year were E. Roland Harriman, H. S. Fenimore Cooper (grandson of James Fenimore Cooper), Knight Wooley (son of Ulysses Grant Wooley), Ellery James, and Henry Neil Mallon. A Skull and Bones legend tells of Bush digging up the Skull of Geronimo (1918) and "donating" it to the society.

After attending the Douglas School in Columbus and St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island, Prescott Bush studied at the renowned Jesuit school, Stonyhurst College in Clitheroe, Lancashire, England from 1908 to 1913. Arguably, one of his greatest legacies at Stonyhurst was designing the boys' golf course (which is still in use today,) and it's where he gained his lifelong passion for the game. In 1914, he enrolled at Yale University, starting a family tradition of higher education, as his son, former president George H.W. Bush, and his grandson, current President George W. Bush are both Yale alumni.

After attending the Douglas School in Columbus and St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island as well as the famous Stonyhurst College in England (where he designed the boys' golf course still in use today) from 1908 to 1913, Bush entered Yale University. There, he played varsity golf, football, and baseball, and was president of the Yale Glee Club. (He was the best close-harmony man in the class of 1917). His devotion to singing at Yale would remain strong his entire life, evidenced in part by his founding of the Yale Glee Club Associates, an alumni group, in 1937. On May 18, 1916 he was "tapped" to join the Skull and Bones society at Yale. Other new "Bonesmen" that year were E. Roland Harriman, H. S. Fenimore Cooper (grandson of James Fenimore Cooper), Knight Wooley (son of Ulysses Grant Wooley), Ellery James, and Henry Neil Mallon. A Skull and Bones legend tells of Bush digging up the skull of Geronimo (1918) and "donating" it to the society.

Prescott Sheldon Bush studied under the Jesuits of Stonyhurst for five years from 1908-1913 then went on to Yale where he kissed the slippered toe of the Pope and bowed before Don Quixote who is really Ignatius Loyola (Cervantes based his character on his contemporary Loyola who he studied with at the University of Salamanca) and dubbed a Knight of Eulogia in the tomb of Skull and Bones-the Brotherhood of Death who tap individuals from certain backgrounds and lineage to initiate them into the Jesuits' Illuminati.

William J. McDonough, vice chairman and special advisor to the chairman at Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. is responsible for assisting senior management in the company's business development efforts with governments and financial institutions.

Previously, from 2003 to 2005, he was chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a private-sector, not-for-profit corporation created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to oversee auditors of public companies.

From 1993 to 2003, Mr. McDonough served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As president, he served as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which formulates U.S. monetary policy. Mr. McDonough also served on the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements and chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He joined the New York Fed in 1992 as executive vice president, head of the bank's markets group and manager of the FOMC's open market operations.

Mr. McDonough retired from First Chicago Corporation and its bank, First National Bank of Chicago, in 1989 after a 22-year career there. He was vice chairman of the board and a director of the bank holding company from 1986 until his retirement. Before joining the New York Fed, Mr. McDonough served as an advisor to a variety of domestic and international organizations. Prior to his career with First Chicago, Mr. McDonough was with the U.S. State Department from 1961 to 1967 and the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1961.

Mr. McDonough earned a master's degree in economics from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and a bachelor's degree, also in economics, from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He also served as an advisory board member for the Yale School of Management.

Mr. McDonough is a member of the board of directors of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. McDonough is chairman of the Investment Committee for the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund, and is co-chairman of the United Nations Association of the United States of America.

William J. McDonough served as the eighth president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for ten years--from July 19, 1993 to June 10, 2003. On June 11, 2003, he became the Chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The PCAOB is a not-for-profit organization created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to protect investors in U.S. securities by ensuring that public company financial statements are audited according to the highest standards.

As president of the New York Fed, McDonough served as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the group responsible for formulating the nation's monetary policy. Mr. McDonough also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements and chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Mr. McDonough began his career at the New York Fed in January 1992 as executive vice president, head of the bank's markets group, and the manager of open market operations for the FOMC.

Mr. McDonough retired from First Chicago Corp. and its bank, First National Bank of Chicago, in 1989 after a 22-year career there. He was vice chairman of the board and a director of the bank holding company from 1986 until his retirement. Before joining the New York Fed, Mr. McDonough served as an advisor to a variety of domestic and international organizations.

Prior to his career with First Chicago, Mr. McDonough was with the U.S. State Department from 1961 to 1967 and the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1961.

Mr. McDonough earned a master's degree in economics from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1962, and a bachelor's degree, also in economics, from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., in 1956.

James E. Burke was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Johnson & Johnson from 1976 to 1989, a company for which he worked at for forty years.

Burke was born on February 28, 1925, in Rutland, Vermont. He earned his BA at the College of the Holy Cross in 1947 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1949.

Burke is credited for the growth of Johnson & Johnson to its current size and prominence, but he is perhaps best known for his crisis management in 1982, when it was found that Tylenol capsules had been poisoned with cyanide.

According to a Fortune article, Burke's "defining moment" actually came six years earlier when he challenged his fellow executives to either recommit to the company credo or "tear it off the wall."

[...]

Following his retirement, he was made chairman emeritus of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA), his work for which lead US president Bill Clinton to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Fortune magazine named him as one of the ten greatest CEOs of all time and he has a membership in the National Business Hall of Fame.

Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. (born April 12, 1947), better known as Tom Clancy, is a US author of bestselling political thrillers, best known for his technically detailed espionage and military science storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War. His name is also a brand for similar books written by ghost writers and a series of non-fiction books on military subjects and merged biographies of key leaders. He is also part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles, a Major League Baseball team. He officially is the Orioles' Vice Chairman of Community Projects and Public Affairs. Tom Clancy is also known for writing popular video games.

Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. was born April 12, 1947, in Calvert County, Maryland. He attended Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Maryland, graduating with the class of 1965. He went on to study English Literature at Loyola College in Baltimore, graduating with the class of 1968. He said he studied English because he was not smart enough to do physics.[1] Before making his literary debut, he spent some time running an independent insurance

Clancy married his first wife, Wanda, in the 1970s. After having four children together, they divorced in 1998.

In 1993, Tom Clancy joined a group of investors that included Peter Angelos and bought the Baltimore Orioles from Eli Jacobs. In 1998, he attempted to purchase the Minnesota Vikings and had a purchase agreement in place, but the deal fell through after his divorce settlement decreased his net worth significantly.[citation needed]

In 1999, Clancy, at age 52, married 32-year-old fellow writer Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, on June 26.

A more recent author associated with Baltimore is Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy was born and raised in Baltimore. He attended Loyola Blakefield in Towson and studied English Literature at our own Loyola College, graduating with the class of 1969. He explained in a message to the Usenet Newstroup (alt.books.tom-clancy), that he studied English because "I wasn't smart enough to do physics."

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (22 May 1859–7 July 1930) was a Scottish author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to an English father, Charles Altamont Doyle, and an Irish mother, Mary Foley, who had married in 1855. Although he is now referred to as "Conan Doyle", the origin of this compound surname is uncertain.[1] Conan Doyle's father was an artist, as were his paternal uncles (one of whom was Richard Doyle), and his paternal grandfather John Doyle.

Conan Doyle was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school St. Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst, at the age of eight. He then went on to Stonyhurst College, but by the time he left the school in 1875, he had rejected Christianity to become an agnostic.

From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, including a period working in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham). While studying, he also began writing short stories; his first published story appeared in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal before he was 20.[2] Following his term at university, he served as a ship's doctor on a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his doctorate on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885.[3]

Conan Doyle's education took place at home and in a local Edinburgh school until, at the age of nine, he was sent to the Jesuit preparatory school of Hodder in Lancashire. Hodder was attached to the Jesuit secondary school of Stonyhurst, and it was to the latter that Conan Doyle moved two years later. The time spent at Stonyhurst was not a particularly happy one, although the records show that the young Doyle was a better than average performer. The spartan surroundings and the Jesuit discipline did not appeal to the young ACD, and it appears that he experienced his fair share of corporal punishment. Fortunately, Conan Doyle's mother struggled to meet the expense of his education at Stonyhurst, rather than dedicate the boy's life to the Jesuits in return for a free education.

It was during his Stonyhurst years that Conan Doyle began seriously to examine his religious beliefs and, by the time he left the school in 1875, he had firmly rejected Catholicism, and probably Christianity in general, and had become an agnostic. The turmoil and questioning which must have taken place in his own mind is dealt with in some detail in the semi-autobiographical novel, The Stark Munro Letters.

After leaving Stonyhurst, Conan Doyle spent a further year with the Jesuits in Feldkirch, Austria, before returning to Edinburgh to study medicine at the University from 1876 to 1881. Besides providing him with a medical degree, Edinburgh University also brough Conan Doyle into contact with two characters who were to be important models for future fictional creations: Professor Rutherford, whose Assyrian beard, prodigious voice, enormous chest, and singular manner became translated into Professor George Edward Challenger of The Lost World; and Dr Joseph Bell, whose amazing deductions concerning the history of his patients were to provide the ideas behind the deductive skills of Sherlock Holmes.

E. Gerald Corrigan (born June 13, 1941) is an American banker and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is currently a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs.

Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Corrigan earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Fairfield University in 1963. He received a master's degree in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1971, both in economics, from Fordham University.

In 1968, he began his career at the New York Federal Reserve, where he remained for twenty-five years, becoming Vice President in 1976, before becoming special assistant to Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Paul Volcker in Washington, D.C. He went on to serve as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1980 to 1984 and New York Federal Reserve President from 1985 until 1993.

From 1991 to 1993 he was Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

He joined Goldman Sachs in 1994, and has been a Managing Director since 1996, where he serves as co-chair of both the Risk Committee and the Global Compliance and Controls Committee.

E. Gerald Corrigan, Ph.D. (GSAS ’65, ’71), has made a $5 million gift to Fordham University, funding critical initiatives at both Fordham College at Rose Hill and the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA). The gift will create an endowed professorship, the Corrigan Chair in International Business and Finance, at GBA, and will further endow the existing E. Gerald Corrigan Endowed Scholarship Fund.

“This gift is especially meaningful given Dr. Corrigan's world class reputation, his distinguished career, and his many accomplishments,” said Howard P. Tuckman, Ph.D., dean of Fordham’s Graduate School of Business Administration. “We are thrilled that his generosity will help the Fordham business schools achieve their joint goal of having a world-recognized finance and economics program and providing an outstanding education for their students.”

John N. Tognino (FCLS ’75), chairman of the Fordham University Board of Trustees, announced the gift at the Sixth Annual Fordham Founder’s Award Dinner, held at the Waldorf=Astoria in Manhattan on March 26. Because Corrigan was traveling in Russia on the evening of the Fordham Founder’s Award Dinner, his daughter, Karen Corrigan, accepted the University’s thanks on his behalf.

The Corrigan chair will add to Fordham’s reputation as a global business center, with a focus on global economic and business research and policy. Working with Fordham's partners in China, Spain, Belgium and Ireland, the chair will allow students to benefit from the experience of problem-solving in the areas of global entrepreneurship, business and government policy and consulting strategy. Corrigan's gift will also further endow the E. Gerald Corrigan Endowed Scholarship Fund, which has provided significant scholarship support to minority students for nearly a decade. With this gift, the fund will now also support academic research assistantships at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

Corrigan received his master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He is a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and has been a managing director of Goldman Sachs since 1994. Corrigan has served on the Fordham University Board of Trustees, and has been a mentor and educator to Fordham students.

Founded in 1841, Fordham is the Jesuit University of New York, offering exceptional education distinguished by the Jesuit tradition to approximately 15,800 students in its five undergraduate colleges and its six graduate and professional schools. It has residential campuses in the Bronx, Manhattan and Tarrytown, and the Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station in Armonk, N.Y.
03/07

E. GERALD CORRIGAN, a veteran of the Federal Reserve System, became chief executive officer of the New York Fed and vice chairman of the FOMC on January 1, 1985 at the age of 43.

Prior to his appointment, Mr. Corrigan was president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank for four and a half years.

Mr. Corrigan was born in June 1941 in Waterbury, Connecticut. He earned a bachelor of social sciences degree in economics from Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut in 1963. He received a master of arts degree in 1965 and a doctor of philosophy degree in 1971, both in economics, from Fordham University.

His career at the New York Fed began in 1968 when he joined the domestic research division as an economist, after teaching at Fordham University in 1967-68. From 1968 to 1979 he served in a variety of staff and official positions including vice president for planning and domestic open market operations.

In August 1979, he went on leave from the Bank to become special assistant to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker in Washington, DC. While there, he was named chairman of the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision by the governors of the central banks of the Group of Ten countries. The Committee provides a forum for regular cooperation among its member countries on banking supervisory matters.

Mr. Corrigan was instrumental in establishing, and also served as co-chairman of, the Russian-American Banking Forum. This organization was set up in June 1992 to assist Russia in the development of its banking and financial system infrastructure.

After nearly 25 years of service in the Federal Reserve System, Mr. Corrigan stepped down as president of the New York Fed on July 19, 1993. In July 1993, President Clinton appointed Mr. Corrigan to head the newly established Russian-American Enterprise Fund.

William Michael Daley (born 1948) served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce and is a business executive.

William Daley was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 8, 1948. He graduated with a B.A. from Loyola University Chicago, and an LL.B. (later amended to Juris Doctor) from John Marshall Law School. Except for a period from 1977 to 1980, during which time he sat on the Advisory Council of Economic Opportunity, Daley practiced law privately with the firm Daley and George.

He became associated with Amalgamated Bank of Chicago, where he was first vice chairman (1989-1990) and then president and chief operating officer (1990-1993). Daley returned to the practice of law, as a partner with the firm Mayer, Brown & Platt from 1993 to 1997. In 1993, he served as special counsel to the President on issues relating to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In 1997, Daley became Secretary of Commerce in the second administration of President Bill Clinton, and he remained at that post until July 2000, when he became chairman of Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign, where he was in charge of choosing a vice presidential nominee.

In December 2001, he was appointed President of SBC Communications Inc. to help reform the company's image. In May 2004, Daley was made Midwest Chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank One Corp. to oversee post-merger operations from Chicago.

Daley currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Boeing, Merck & Co., Inc, Boston Properties, Inc., and Loyola University Chicago. He also sits on the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is the seventh and youngest child of the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and Eleanor "Sis" Daley, and the brother of the city's current mayor, Richard M. Daley.

René Descartes (French IPA: [ʁə'ne de'kaʁt]) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy" and the "Father of Modern Mathematics", and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a reaction to his writings, which have been closely studied from his time down to the present day. His influence in mathematics is also apparent, the Cartesian coordinate system that is used in plane geometry and algebra being named for him, and he was one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.

Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, a treatise on the Early Modern version of what are now commonly called emotions, he goes so far as to assert that he will write on his topic "as if no one had written on these matters before". Many elements of his philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like St. Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differs from the Schools on two major points: first, he rejects the analysis of corporeal substance into matter and form; second, he rejects any appeal to ends—divine or natural—in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God’s act of creation.

Descartes was a major figure in 17th century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well. As the inventor of the Cartesian coordinate system, Descartes founded analytic geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, crucial to the invention of calculus and analysis. Descartes's reflections on mind and mechanism began the strain of western thought that much later, impelled by the invention of the electronic computer and by the possibility of machine intelligence, blossomed into the Turing test and related thought. His most famous statement is: Cogito ergo sum (French: Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am), found in §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (Latin) and in part IV of Discourse on the Method (French).

Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine (now Descartes), Indre-et-Loire, France. When he was one year old, his mother Jeanne Brochard died of tuberculosis. His father Joachim was a judge in the High Court of Justice. At the age of eleven, he entered the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Flèche. After graduation, he studied at the University of Poitiers, earning a Baccalauréat and License in law in 1616, in accordance with his father's wishes that he should become a lawyer.

René Descartes was one of the first and most illustrious students of the school from 1607 to
1615, and introduced the school in his Discourse on Method under the phrase "I was in one of the most famous schools of Europe".